To dissolve, submerge, and cause to disappear the political or governmental system in the economic system by reducing, simplifying, decentralizing and suppressing, one after another, all the wheels of this great machine, which is called the Government or the State. --Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution

Friday, June 08, 2012

Small Business Survey: Licensing and Regulations Trump Local Tax Rates

I recently got some interesting information about a small business survey from Sander Daniels:

I'm Sander Daniels, co-founder of Thumbtack.com - we're a site where you
can easily hire local help (photographers, tutors, carpenters, etc.).
We've partnered with the Kauffman Foundation to conduct a survey of
6,000 of the small businesses on our site. We've ranked the friendliness
of states and cities towards small business, and we're releasing the
results this Tuesday, 5/8.

You can see the beta preview of the results here and a methodology and analysis paper here.

Here are some of the survey's most interesting findings:

Small businesses care almost twice as much about licensing regulations
as they do about tax rates when rating the business-friendliness of
their state or local government.

An important predictor of small business friendliness was whether
small business owners are aware of their state or local government
offering training programs for small businesses.